If You Are Not Slightly Terrified, You Should Be

 There's another three weeks or so left in the Trump presidency. And Trump has abdicated any interest in governing the nation. 

Instead, he is wholly concerned with trying to remain in power. He has tried to bully election officials, gone to court about 60 times to overturn election results, and appealed to state legislators.

None of that has worked. Now he is only left with extra-legal actions -- like trying to pull off a military coup. And he does have some around him, like the criminal Michael Flynn, who is urging him to do exactly that.

Trump has always admired autocrats, like Putin, and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he may resort to such extreme measures to remain in power. I doubt he could succeed in pulling off a military coup -- but it's terrifying that any president would even consider doing that.

Here is a small part of Joe Duncan has to say about this at medium.com:

If you’re not slightly terrified, filled with a state of unease at the present moment, you should be. . . .

If there was ever a time that many of our fears would be most likely to materialize, this would be it. As President Trump scrambles to buy time and figure out a way to overturn the legitimate election that unseated him, the President who’s shared all of the traditional hallmarks of the autocratic tendency is looking for any way to cling to power. And Trump has a lot of unsavory characters in his orbit these days.

Between Sidney Powell, the lawyer who stood in front of the nation and talked about “releasing the Kraken” before espousing a series of conspiracy theories that sought to explain why Trump lost the election; and Michael Flynn, the disgraced former National Security Advisor who now spends his free time talking about a military coup on live TV; it’s safe to say the better characters in Trump’s inner orbit have jumped ship. . . .

It seems like just days ago I was reporting on Michael Flynn’s live TV interview where he said the President could just install the military in the battleground states where he didn’t win, force them to hold another election — one where Trump, not Biden would win — and thus steal the election from the duly elected President-elect Joe Biden. . . .

Make no mistake, the stuff Michael Flynn has been talking about over the last few weeks are dangerous. He said Trump could give the order to steal voting machines in order to hold a new election, a mock election, functionally undoing the vote of the American People.

And Trump asked about the idea, poking around for details that might help him in his quest to remain president at all costs. . . .

For me, it’s hard to put myself into the mental state of the kind of person who would burn down the Republic because they couldn’t handle losing, but it seems that Trump, Flynn, Powell, and the surprising (read: alarming) amount of followers who’ve still clung to the Trump brand like a fading trend they’d invested their life savings on, are just those kinds of people. Incapable of accepting reality as it is.

The Republican Party Chair of Arizona is even urging Trump, in those words, to “cross the Rubicon,” an obvious reference to Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River and starting of the Roman Civil War of 49 B.C. This is just one more statement in a long lineage of Confederate apologetics and civil war rhetoric. . . .

I think it’s just about next to impossible. Trump would have to find military generals willing to carry out such commands in his name. Here we’d have a draft dodger ordering career military to essentially undo the American nation. Something tells me that conversation wouldn’t go over so well. . . .

But it’s scary that Trump’s military coup moment has arrived and the discussions about such a coup are literally underway.

43% Of GOP Say They Could Support A U.S. Military Coup

The United States has one of the most stable governments in  the world. There has never been a military coup (a takeover of the government by the military) -- and most Americans would be horrified at the prospect that it could ever happen.

But if you have any doubt as to how extremist the Republican Party has become, the chart above should settle that doubt (and it should scare the hell out of you). About 43% (or more than 4 out of 10) Republicans say they could envision a situation where they would support a military takeover of the United States government. Another 25% say they are sure whether they could support that or not. Only 32% (slightly less than a third) of Republicans say they could never support a military coup.

Supporting a military coup is right-wing extremism at its worst -- and it's something that no American should even consider supporting. The very idea of it is traitorous. But that's where the Republican Party is these days. It's their way or the highway, and compromise is no longer an option for them (which they have clearly demonstrated during the terms of President Obama).

The modern Republican Party is an extremist party -- one willing to trash our democracy to see that their "values" trump the wishes of the majority. There's simply no other way to put it.

The chart above represents a result from the recent YouGov Poll -- done on September 2nd and 3rd of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 4 points.

Egyptian Democracy Was Just An Illusion

There is sad news coming out of Egypt. It seems that the Egyptian military, led by General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi (pictured above), has pulled off a military coup -- kicking out the duly-elected President (Mohammed Morsi) and suspending the Constitution. Even sadder is the fact that many Egyptians, including leaders of the opposition parties and those who had been demonstrating against Morsi, are celebrating his removal by the military as though it was a good thing.

It isn't, because it means that a democracy never really existed in Egypt. When a government exists only because the country's military allows it to exist, that is not a democracy. It is a form of military autocratic rule (however benign it might be). It is not unusual for a leader in a democracy to be unpopular, because sometimes they must take actions that many people don't like (but that the leader believes is necessary).

There are ways to deal with the unpopularity of a leader in a democracy. You can oppose his/her actions in the legislative body, or you can oppose those actions in a court of law. You can even seek to impeach that leader if his/her actions are egregious enough. And finally, you can vote the leader out of office in the next scheduled election. But the one thing that cannot happen in a democracy is the removal of a leader by the military, because that action kills the democracy. After all, if the military can remove a leader you don't like, then they also can remove a leader you do like -- which is why all Egyptians should be mourning today, not celebrating.

Obviously, the Egyptian "democracy" was nothing more than an illusion.

Right-Wing Wins Honduran Election

It looks like the right-wing reactionary forces in Honduras may have gotten what they wanted. They had orchestrated a military coup to oust leftist President Manuel Zelaya, and on Sunday they elected right-winger Porfirio Lobo (pictured)to be the new president (taking office in January).

Zelaya had asked the populace to boycott the election, since the outlaw coup-government was still in power and still refusing to return him to his elected office. The government is claiming a 60% turnout, but Zelaya says the illegal government has inflated the turnout figures.

Honduran right-wingers are hoping the election can be used to justify the military coup they orchestrated, and it looks like the United States will fall into that trap. The U.S. government says they will accept the results of the election (and probably resume foreign aid). Personally, I think the Obama administration is making a big mistake.

Many had hoped that true democracy was coming to Latin America, but support of the newly-elected right-wing government is little more than support for military coups. The rich right-wingers in Honduras should not be allowed to oust by force a government they don't like, and then hold a fraudulent election to justify their action. It signals a return to the "bad old days" in Latin America.

Fortunately, most countries in the Americas are not as easy to deceive as the United States. Most Central and South American countries do not accept Sunday's election results. They see it as a justification of the military coup.

The Brazilian president said, "There are still many nations, especially in Central America, in vulnerable political situations. Brazil therefore must not recognize nor rethink the Honduran question." They say Zelaya will remain in the Brazilian embassy (where he has been for weeks).

Right-wingers think the military coup is still a viable option for retaining their control in Latin America. I hope they are wrong. But if it is not defeated now in Honduras, it will probably spread to other countries.

Honduran Regime Curtails Freedoms

A few weeks ago, the rich in Honduras used their political puppets to engineer a military coup. They seized power from the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, and installed their own right-wing zealot, Roberto Micheletti. The excuse these right-wing reactionaries used for the coup was that Zelaya was trying to pass constitutional changes that would allow him to stay in power.

They claimed they were trying to protect Honduran democracy by keeping Zelaya from illegally staying in power. Of course, this was nothing but a huge lie. Zelaya has repeatedly denied a desire to stay in the presidency past his elected term of office. Zelaya was about to hold a vote on some constitutional changes, but it was only a non-binding referendum to see if the people would support the changes if they were made.

The truth is that the reactionaries were afraid of the proposed constitutional changes. They knew it would create a society fairer to the poor and disadvantaged, and this might come at the expense of their vast fortunes. No longer would they be able to take advantage of those with less. So, in order to keep their privilege and position in Honduran society (not to mention their ill-gotten wealth), they organized a military coup -- just like the bad old days.

Some of the right-wing in this country has tried to defend the illegal government installed by the coup, but the actions of the Micheletti government make that harder each day. They have surrounded the Brazilian embassy, where Zelaya is staying, and are now threatening to deny Brazil embassy rights in Honduras so they can seize both the embassy and Zelaya.

Now they have gone even further, and shown themselves to be anything but democratic. They have suspended the right to freedom of speech and the right of the people to congregate and demonstrate.

They have also closed a radio station (Radio Globo) and a television station (Channel 36), and seized their equipment (see picture). They did this because these two news outlets were the only ones brave enough to broadcast all of the news, including that from Zelaya and his supporters.

The so-called "democracy" of the coup government has no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech and no right for the people to peaceably assemble. How can that even be jokingly called a democracy? Can a democracy exist without these freedoms?

The illegal coup government says everything will be alright after the November elections, but even the United Nations says the situation in Honduras is not conducive to free and fair elections, and have withdrawn their election aid. There's no way this illegal government will allow the election of anyone except one of their right-wing flunkies.

Democracy is dead in Honduras. It died on the night of the military coup.